Imagine sitting across from one of the NFL’s most decorated offensive minds, not watching tape, not reviewing game film, just two people bouncing football ideas off each other like old friends. For Alabama quarterback Ty Simpson, that’s exactly what his NFL Combine interview with Pittsburgh Steelers head coach Mike McCarthy felt like.

“It was just two guys working ball,” Simpson said. “It was cool just to see us talk about footwork. Talk about forwards, talk about situational football and two-minute, bringing up scenarios that he’s had in his career to where they’re crucial.”

This wasn’t your standard interview language. It was a coach investing his intellectual energy in a prospect, and a prospect sharp enough to recognize it. McCarthy walked Simpson through real-game dilemmas and asked a simple but loaded question: “What would you do here?” And the right answer wasn’t always the point.

“Whether I got the question right or wrong, it was still cool to realize, ‘Hey, this is what had happened, this is what the answer I was looking for, this is why,’” Simpson added. “And we would just bounce ideas back and forth to each other.”

This kind of coaching is McCarthy’s signature. He spent 13 seasons building Aaron Rodgers into an MVP-caliber player with the Green Bay Packers. Now in Pittsburgh, he’s already showing why he’s one of the most respected quarterback developers in the game. And Simpson also feels like a perfect candidate for McCarthy to bring under his tutelage.

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While Ty Simpson entered Indianapolis as a mid-round project, that doesn’t exactly define his ceiling. In 2025 with the Crimson Tide, Simpson threw for 3,567 yards and 28 touchdowns against just 5 picks, guiding his team all the way to the playoff quarterfinal before losing to Indiana. Getting time with McCarthy’s football mind notably left Simpson in awe.

“A guy like that has had success in the league for a long time and is well respected,” Simpson concluded. “Any time that I get to sit in an interview and talk to him and just soak up all that knowledge, there’s anything I could ask for.”

Mike McCarthy is doing all the right things. He’s coaching prospects at the Combine, building contingency game plans, and steadying a locker room still stinging from January’s Wild Card exit. But all of that preparation leads to the same question Steel City has been asking since the season ended: who lines up under center in 2026?

The Aaron Rodgers dilemma still plagues Pittsburgh in 2026

Will Aaron Rodgers come back for another season? That has been one of the most discussed topics of this offseason so far. Mike McCarthy can build the program, but he can’t answer the one question that defines it. That answer belongs solely to Aaron Rodgers.

NFL Network’s Tom Pelissero has set the hard deadline: “Aaron needs to make a decision sooner than later, and it probably comes right around the start of the league year, which is on March 11th.”

Less than two weeks. That’s all that stands between Pittsburgh knowing its offensive identity or having to reinvent it overnight. For now, the loudest voices do seem to be cheering for the return of AR8.

Pelissero notes, “If he’s going to play, I believe it will be for the Pittsburgh Steelers.”

Even Adam Schefter has called a return “more likely than not.” Additionally, Steelers insider Mark Kaboly has predicted a deal before free agency opens. General manager Omar Khan has also maintained that the “door is open” for Rodgers’ return, and he expects an answer faster than last year.

Last season, Rodgers didn’t sign until June and still led Steel City to a 10-7 record, the AFC North title, and two wins over the Baltimore Ravens in heated rivalry battles. This time around, a March signing would give McCarthy and Rodgers something Pittsburgh didn’t have last season: a full offseason together.

McCarthy’s playbook is already in Rodgers’ DNA from 13 years in Green Bay. The fit has never been more natural, and yet the uncertainty remains. CBS Sports’ Aditi Kinkhabwala has hit back hard at all the reunion rumors.

“Most everyone that I’ve spoken to who has been around him feels that the chance that he comes back to play is minuscule,” Kinkhabwala notes. “It seems far more likely that he is done than that he is going to return.”

But if that’s the case, McCarthy doesn’t seem worried. He’s already running two parallel versions of his offense in practice. One that’s tailored for Aaron Rodgers, and one that’s tailored to Will Howard, the young quarterback who enters his second year without a single NFL game under his belt.

Mike McCarthy isn’t waiting on anyone. Ty Simpson has seen it firsthand. Howard has been living it all offseason. But until Aaron Rodgers picks up the phone, Pittsburgh’s 2026 identity remains blank. Now, March 11 is the only deadline that seems to matter.